Deciding whether or not your small business should blog

Okay, so I have quite a lot of fears: fear of heights, fear of water I can’t see more than 10 feet into, fear of being late, fear of making mistakes, but the one that I have to face on a daily basis is my fear of blank pages. As a writer, seeing all that white paired with that little, blinking black line at the beginning of it is enough to make me grab an extra cup of coffee, run that errand I had been putting off for months, call my aunts, uncles, grandmas, Facebook stalk all my high school friends, you name it -- all in an effort to stave off that hideous, taunting black line.

Running a blog (and facing that fear) isn’t exactly for every blogger--or company, for that matter. So how do you decide whether or not your company should spend valuable time and resources on such a significant investment?

Gauge your resources.

Running a blog for your company is a great way to cull your insights and offer up thought leadership specific to your industry in a way that people would find useful. However, it would be all for naught if you simply don’t have the people-power or the time to get it done well and on a regular basis.

You can take the first step to deciding on a blog with a really simple formula:  Time + People = Successful Blog

You really can’t run a business blog successfully without one or the other. There may be time to do so but if there aren’t people, who’s going to write it? Likewise, there may be people but not enough time and again, you’ll find yourself in the same position of deciding which stressed-out employee will write it. But if you have both? Well, now we’re cooking with gas.

Be authentic.

Listen to me when I say this, because this is important to starting your blog: a great, high-ranking website in this day and age has little to do with keyword stuffing or putting all your attention on your meta tags. Those are still important, yes, but not the end-all-be-all.

What’s important is really, really good content. If you don’t know what to write about, don’t really care to research, and will post infrequently/ad hoc, a business blog might not be for you. That’s why authenticity is a key factor here. If you’re writing about what you love--and it just happens to relate to your industry – then you’ve struck gold. That is the type of blog visitors, customers and Google will love you for.

Read our how to get the creative juices flowing post to get started writing.

Be consistent.

This one seems a bit obvious, but it matters. First impressions are everything when it comes to striking a deal with a possible new client. You don’t want to be that business blog that updates once a year. Not only does that make you look like you can’t focus on a coordinated effort as a team, but it also makes it look like business ain’t doin’ so hot, especially if you start – and can’t seem to keep up with – a blog.

Don’t worry about publishing once a day either, instead, find a rotation that suits you and your industry. For many small businesses, publishing a blog post once a month does the trick.

Running a business blog might not be for every small business. It’s a great way to keep your website content fresh, but knowing your resources, being consistent and being as transparent in your writing as possible are the major key factors here when deciding whether or not running a blog is worth the effort in the long run.